Well the Lightning Seeds were brilliant. Once again I went in the iBot, this time with Wendy and feeling a bit protected by that. But the curse of London transport hits me every bloody time!

This time the tube destination was changed as a passenger had been ill. Everyone else on the train moaned about having to change tubes. I didn’t moan, I just thought’ oh fuck, I could be stuffed here ‘.
Everyone walking can just hop over to another platform and change trains. I can only do that at wheelchair Accessibility stations, of which there are very few.

So an hour journey once again became a 2 hour, involving 2 more buses and a totally different route. I had conflict with a bus driver who refused to move the bus until I was in exactly the position he wanted my chair. No amount of explanation on my part that no, I can’t just park this like you can park a buggy, made any difference. An off duty policeman on the bus had to get involved to a pretty large extent before the bus would move. A little understanding and humanity would definitely help me. My battery slowly trickled away but we made it back eventually. If i didn’t know the city routes fairly well, or didn’t have a mobile phone with power and data, I’d be buggered.

None of it was at all funny. Well… other than when the off duty cop interjected politely, and Wendy told him in a very firm tone ‘ EXCUSE ME! THIS IS ABSOLUTELY NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS’ I think that’s possibly the first time she’s talked to anyone that firmly. Amusing then that it was the police officer, who said firmly back ‘ well as a police officer I’m making it my business…’

I didn’t laugh at the time, but I am laughing now!

Well it’s been a full on week. Sunday my oldest mate ( no, not in age ) Mike J came to visit, with his son Olly. Jeez his son is now 22, and plays the sax for a living now, well as well as being in Music college. Mike’s a great guy – we were best mates at 5 years old! I still see us as kids, not adults. His son is in a band – Year of The Dog. Look em up on YouTube or Spotify and have a listen. Really good sound!

Monday Wendy and I went to a gig in Hammersmith. Marina is Welsh/ Greek. She would seem to have a MASSIVE LGBT following. I think I was the only person in the venue not dressed in women’s clothes, despite half those their having been born with male features. The disabled area seemed yet again to be full of people with no obvious mobility issues. I wrote to the venue to point this out, but I doubt I’ll get anywhere. The wheelchair bit accommodates only 8 people, and isn’t for ‘ the ambulant disabled’ apparently ie those who could actually just sit in regular seats, but time and time again their own rules aren’t adhered to, and all tickets are sold to people who really are abusing the system, rather than need the facility.
Anyway, Marina was a bit mediocre tbh. I saw her about 7 years ago, Pre injury, and she was really good. She’s gone all bubblegum – and commercial, and a bit crap. She had a variety of mismatched dancers on with her some of whom were a bit amateur. She’s not school hall type stuff – she was playing in front of 2000 people. 4/10 from me.

Then on Tuesday I went in my iBot to theatre land, to see Shakespears Sister. They were dead cool til they suddenly split up after a bitch fight disagreement. Lily came with me and we had fun. It was old skool for Lily. She was born 8 years after they last performed!
I went in the iBot as in the Palladium the wheelchair spaces are just on the ends of rows of seats. Everyone stands up and that’s the end of the show as you can’t see anything at all! However the iBot makes me taller than most so I just rise up onto 2 wheels and Hey Presto! The band 7/10 from me, but definitely worth seeing.

As the iBot has a dicky battery etc it’s always a gamble going out in it. I had hardly any power left and had to travel 10 miles to home. The bloody tubes just stopped and we were a bit stuck for half an hour on a platform, my power trickling away. If the thing stops then it takes 2 blokes to push it up a slope, leaving me effectively stranded tbh. Eventually we got to Hammersmith where the lifts to the bus station had broken. I have become an expert on ramp locations tho, and so got to the bus ramp and drove up that. It was dark and double decker london buses were out in force, so not exactly safe for me to use it. Hey, I don’t have much choice though, do I ?

A bus ride for the last 3 miles and then home at 12. No such thing as an uneventful evening for me, it seems.
Tonight it’s back to town to see The Lightning Seeds. They were brilliant back in the day, and have reformed. Their album Jollification is dead good, and they are playing it all tonight. They actually did the Three Lions World Cup anthem as well. Perhaps that’s their most famous work??

Tomorrow it’s the Bombay Bicycle Club in Brixton, and then the theatre on Saturday night to see Death of a Salesman. That’s at the theatre where a part of the theatre ceiling fell down into the audience last night! Apparently a chap who had a job selling things was killed… let’s hope it’s back up by Saturday, and the wheelchair space is under the bit of ceiling that has already fallen down.

I don’t deliberately book 6 things in one week, but somehow I have. I book stuff well in advance- often a year in advance – and then suddenly I get to a week where I’m never home.

Keeps me sane, and stops me doing a Bonny.
Because trust me, I often still think about it. My head just goes chillingly cold in terms of emotion and anything is then possible.

But too much on this week!

https://road.cc/content/news/268351-orange-bikes-lynchpin-michael-bonney-brings-his-life-its-end-six-years-after

I can relate to how Michael feels, in every way. No, I’m not as badly off as he was, nowhere near.
But his words could be my words, they are my words, the ones in my head that go round and round every day, still.

https://road.cc/content/news/268351-orange-bikes-lynchpin-michael-bonney-brings-his-life-its-end-six-years-after

When you are in a wheelchair you can’t do zillions of things because you either you can’t even get near to em, in the first place, or once there you aren’t physically capable of partaking.
But you can do things involving talking, listening and looking at stuff. Me n Marky P couldn’t get into a lecture the other day, because it had been cancelled, so we crossed the road to the nearest accessible place and went in there. That was the V&A in London. It’s an old building but there are lots of ramps, and the odd lift here and there. Couple of modern guys that we are, we then paid extra ( well I did, and he got in free as my helper – see, the perks of hanging around with me go on and on… ) to go up in the lift and see the Quant exhibition. Mary Q was the girl that revolutionised fashion, pretty much. She got a lot to answer for really. At one time only the slim and beautiful wore her style of clothing … but I think she’d turn, or more like spin at high speed, if she saw the munters ( that’s a brilliant Welsh bit of offensive slang there ) that trundle around in mini skirts on Friday nights all around the world.
Go and see the exhibition – it’s brilliant. The designs she created are so very cool ( when worn by those she intended to wear em ) and there is lots of video of her talking too. Back then clothes were expensive, if you wanted to dress in anything other than granny outfits, but she changed that, introducing fashion for the ( middle class ) masses. People definitely valued anything from Quant, and the less well heeled would save up to buy something from her shops, then wear the item to death. These days of disposable fashion, that’s inconceivable to most women, isn’t it?

Anyway, aside from that a comedy club was accessible on Wendy’s birthday, the Royal Geograpical Society nights continue to tempt me into Kensington, as does the odd visit to the Science Museum. Museums do seem by and large very accessible, as are modern cinemas. I saw the new Terminator film on Monday. Blimmin load of rubbish. You’d think that 30 years after the original film making might have progressed, but it hasn’t has it? It’s just lots of CGI fighting and destruction scenes with virtually no plot. In this one it’s all about female heroines. The baddy is male, but all the goodies are chicks, both human and ‘ enhanced human ‘. It just doesn’t work though ( he said without meaning to be sexist ).

And if you wanna see loads of enhanced women in the flesh, just go the West London. The Plastic Fantastic are everywhere. BOBFOC is the byword you could say ..

BOBFOC?

Body Off Baywatch Face Off Crimewatch…

So what of my spasms? I’ve not really said much about those for a bit. I used to get ones where my legs would jerk and it would happen a lot at night, so that I couldn’t sleep.
My spasms have altered so that for a long time since the insertion of the drastic ( over drastic and medically negligent – in my opinion ) metalwork in my back, my legs have become stiffer and stiffer. These days they are so bloody rigid it’s difficult to move them with my arms even. No matter what I do in terms of trying to stretch them, or the amount of massage they get, they are nearly always rock solid.

Not very helpful at all that. It makes already hard things even harder.

Blimey. I just remembered that I had a dream about Michael Jackson last night! In my dreams I’m usually not in a wheelchair, and I wasn’t in this one. I’d been introduced to him in a sort of function the day before and then I realised his hotel room was near to mine. No it’s not what you are thinking either! He was a nice bloke and was with his wife I think? He had remembered my name and wasn’t at all up his own bum ( no, and not up mine either! )

In the dream I took a few selfies with him and then invited my kids over, without telling them who was with me. It all made sense at the time…

Maybe I’ll dream about Elvis next? And meet his 2 kids, Lesley and Wesley? Keep you posted.

A lovely fella I used to work with sent me this – and yes it’s true….

I volunteer at a cancer hospital 5 days a month but thought you would find this funny 😂
2 elderly patients brought this book in for our children’s cancer section today ……. don’t think they had really looked at it 🤣

I just got a call from social services. She said that I ought have a hospital bed, that’s higher up and moves electronically.
I said yes, that would be better, and can I have a double so that my girlfriend fits in too.

I could hear the whirring of brain waves at the other end… ‘ you what?! You disabled people want to have the same as us normal people?! You aren’t happy to sleep alone for the rest of your lives?! The ingratitude of it! ‘

But after the whirring had stopped I heard ‘ sorry, we hear that a lot, but doubles aren’t available. Maybe one day ‘

I said ‘ well what about my human rights? Isn’t it discriminatory? ‘ Obviously it was tongue in cheek, but of course it’s a serious point – even nighttime company is denied you officially. If ever you want company at night, it’s after you have suffered the catastrophic effects of your body having been smashed to bits.

But they don’t think about that. If I was morbidly obese and 300 pounds, because I had eaten myself to that condition , maybe they’d give me a larger bed..? Food for thought…

I said I’d keep the bed I have then.

Well I have to say that Ga.R.y Numan is bloody good. If you don’t actually look at him, and just listen and ‘ be there’ he’s brilliant.
If you look at him then you see a short rolypoly fella just a bit too old to be in a skirt and ‘ dancing’ in a very ‘ unique ‘ way. …

Numan gets 9/10. Me n Chris had a laugh and the bus stop right outside has a no 31 bus that goes all the way to my street, pretty much?! How useful is that?! Shame you can’t get the same bus in the opposite direction tho. I caught a tube to Westminster and them Triride’d 6 miles through London. Christ the roads are hard to navigate, packed and in TERRIBLE condition. That 6 miles took 90 minutes?! I think I got lost a few times using my compass, which I think gets confused by my metal Triride. For some reason my phone navigation wasn’t talking to me. Anyway I got there ok, after seeing Pia for a cuppa, and before that G.

Busy, me!